Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies

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A Sloppy Mess

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The Clean Up Crew

by Hope Madden

Jon Keeyes has made a lot of movies, none of them very good. Generally, his films star two actors you’ve heard of and wish were in better films. Sometimes, only one of those two have talent.

The Clean Up Crew stars a couple of Keeyes veterans—the always fun Antonio Banderas (who was in Cult Killer from the same director earlier this year) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who seemed to have talent at one time and also starred in Keeyes’s 2021 effort The Survivalist.

Plus, we get a bonus actor who should be getting better roles, Oscar winner Melissa Leo. Leo and Meyers play one half of a crime scene clean-up crew, alongside drug addled PTSD sufferer Chuck (Swen Temmel), and Meagan (Ekaterina Baker), who’s hoping a sudden windfall will mean that she and Alex (Meyers) can get married.

That windfall is the briefcase full of cash that was left behind at the crime scene they’ve been hired to clean up. It belongs to crime lord Gabriel (Banderas), and he wants it back.

The script by Keeyes’s longtime collaborator Matthew Rogers delivers a solid enough premise and bursts of humor, but nothing holds together. The Clean Up Crew feels like several different movies nonsensically stapled together.

The nonexistent rapport among the characters goes a long way to emphasize the disjointed narrative. At no point do you believe any one of these humans has feelings for any of the others, certainly not that one would risk life and limb for another. It’s not that they don’t seem to like each other as much as they don’t seem to know each other well enough to not hello at Kroger’s.

Meyers may as well be in an entirely different film. Banderas—who likely filmed his scenes over a weekend in a single location far from everyone else—basically is in a different film. His is more fun because, to his credit, the actor seems to be doing what he can to enjoy himself.

Leo struggles mightily with her curious Irish brogue, and no one scene predicts the next in any logical way. Keeyes can’t decide whether or not to treat the violence as comedy, but it certainly appears from nowhere and builds to a showdown no one really wants that delivers no type of narrative satisfaction.

The Clean Up Crew is a comedy that’s not funny, a thriller with no thrills, and a flat action flick sutured together into a dizzyingly incoherent paycheck for a few actors who deserve better, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

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Half and Half

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Close to You

by Hope Madden

“You were not worried about me when I was not OK.”

The quote is exactly the kind of lived-in epiphany you might expect from filmmaker Dominic Savage, whose work leans toward intimate improvisational dramas. In his latest, a young man, Sam (Elliot Page), returns home for the first time in four years—the first time since his transition. And though his family is supportive—almost giddily so—he dreads the trip because no matter who you are, your family is still on about their same shit.

So, Sam’s older sister’s concern about his job and his apartment and the stress he’s putting on his parents by staying away and how they’re all worried about him evokes a response that rings true no matter who your family is or how well you get along.

In these moments, Savage and Page, who gets a co-writing credit, unveil something so authentic that it’s impossible not to see both the uniqueness and the universality of their story. And Page is excellent, bringing an emotional depth and integrity to the character that reveals itself in scene after scene.

Close to You never wallows in tragedy or grief or pain, but in its best moments, it allows that sadness to singe its edges. The family drama builds relentlessly and honestly to something cathartic and difficult. Unfortunately, this is not really the story the filmmakers are telling. Savage balances the family drama with a romance. On the train in from Toronto, Sam runs into Katherine (Hillary Baack).

The two have history and a love story attempts to bloom, but it lacks all of the authenticity, detail and depth of the family drama. Nothing rings true, and the unstructured feel that gave the family’s storyline depth emphasizes emptiness in scenes between Page and Baack. Every time the film cuts away from the family to spend time in the budding relationship, you long to return to the unpleasantness of home.

When Savage finally abandons the family drama altogether in favor of the romance, the loose narrative feel becomes almost unbearable. Where early scenes spilled over with unspoken tensions and crackled with anxiety, later scenes meander and stall.

A stitched together whole of two unequal parts, Close to You leaves you wanting.

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Trail Snacks

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Consumed

by Hope Madden

The Wendigo is a presence that has proven hard to create on film. Ravenous—Antonia Bird’s 1999 small miracle of Western horror—conjures the spirit of the beast and comes off best. In her hands, the flesh consuming monster equates to the horrors of war.

For director Michael Altieri, working from a script by David Calbert, the mythical creature is a stand-in for cancer. It’s a great conceit, honestly, and one I wish had been executed a little more successfully.

Courtney Halverson plays Beth, who heads into the deep woods with her husband, Jay (Mark Famiglietti) to celebrate one year of remission. But the two are stalked by something terrifying and eventually fall into the hands of another person (Devon Sawa)—friend or foe, they can’t quite tell—as they plot their escape from the forest.

Altieri—formerly half of the Butcher Brothers (The Hamiltons, A Beginner’s Guide to Snuff, The Violent Kind), this time directing solo—soaks much production value from his two or three locations. A clear pro with limited means, Altieri makes the most of just three performers, generating dread and analogizing well.

The performers range in skill. Genre veteran Sawa convinces as the hunter with a past and an agenda and Famiglietti fares well enough as the supportive husband, although there’s not a lot to the role.

Most of the weight of the film lands on Halverson’s shoulders and she struggles early on, the layers of her conflicted emotions never taking authentic shape. She’s on more solid ground once Beth goes full badass, but without an early emotional hook for her character and relationship with her husband, you’re less invested in their survival.

More problematic is the presentation of the beast itself. Here the budget really makes itself known. Altieri oscillates between smoky swirls of digital FX and the shadowy presence of practical FX, but the combination is far from seamless. The film would have benefitted from sticking with practical and taking a less-is-more approach to what it showed.

It doesn’t entirely sink the production, but it does slow whatever momentum Consumed builds every time the beast arrives. Given its other setbacks, that’s enough to lessen the overall satisfaction the movie offers.

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Odd Bird

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My Penguin Friend

by Hope Madden

An old fisherman who’s never recovered from an unendurable loss saves the life of a little penguin. They become best friends. It’s a true story that was clearly designed by the movie gods, but luckily it fell into the hands of director David Schurmann, whose work may lean crowd-pleasing but never glossy or self-indulgent.

My Penguin Friend doesn’t need it. Though Act 1, introducing the tragedy that will haunt Joao (Jean Reno, a heartbreaking delight), does go a bit over the top in its cinematic tendencies, Schurmann and team settle into a more natural rhythm by the beginning of the second act.

Reno’s a broken, sunken old man who doesn’t go into town and hasn’t talked with his old fisherman friends in so long they barely remember. His wife Maria (Adriana Barraza, underused but as nuanced and authentic as ever) co-exists but the emptiness of their home is its own character.

Schurmann doesn’t rely on an imposing score or even a seasoned cast to manipulate our emotions, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it. It’s what he does not show in Act 1 that haunts Reno’s eyes and the surface of the ocean outside Joao and Maria’s window. Schurmann reminds us of what none of us could bear to see just often enough to make your breath catch for the fear that Joao might have to live through the heartbreak again.

Which would be unbearable if the film didn’t also offer the levity, goofiness and undeniable cuteness of this penguin who befriends Joao, baffles scientists, and swims 5000 miles from Argentina to Brazil every year or so to hang out and watch TV on the sofa with his buddy.

It’s about the dearest thing you’re ever going to see, which just about makes up for the fact that most of the ensemble has never acted and it shows. Any stretch of narrative without Reno feels twice as long as it is, but there is no denying the heartbreaking charm whenever he and Barraza are onscreen.

There are plenty of flaws that keep My Penguin Friend from really singing, but it’s not enough to dampen the joy to be found with this odd couple.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Teachers in Horror

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Is there any time of year more horrifying than back to school? We share the misery, taking a gander at some of the most disturbing and most fun teachers in horror.

5. Little Monsters (2019)

Basically, Little Monsters is Cooties meets Life is Beautiful.

Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o, glorious as always) has taken her kindergarten class on a field trip. The petting zoo sits next door to a military testing facility, one thing eats the brains of another and suddenly Miss Caroline is hurdling zombies and convincing her class this is all a game.

Little Monsters is, in its own bloody, entrail-strewn way, adorable. Honestly. And so very much of that has to do with Nyong’o. Miss Caroline’s indefatigable devotion to her students is genuinely beautiful, and Nyong’o couldn’t be more convincing.

4. Diabolique (1955)

Pierre Boileau’s novel was such hot property that even Alfred Hitchcock pined to make it into a film. But Henri-Georges Clouzot got hold if it first. His psychological thriller with horror-ific undertones is crafty, spooky, jumpy and wonderful.

And it wouldn’t work if it weren’t for the weirdly lived-in relationship among Nicole (Simone Signoret) – a hard-edged boarding school teacher – and the married couple that runs the school. Christina (Vera Clouzot) is a fragile heiress; her husband Michel (Paul Meurisse) is the abusive, blowhard school headmaster. Michel and Nicole are sleeping together, Christine knows, both women are friends, both realize he’s a bastard. Wonder if there’s something they can do about it.

What unravels is a mystery with a supernatural flavor that never fails to surprise and entrance. All the performances are wonderful, the black and white cinematography creates a spectral atmosphere, and that bathtub scene can still make you jump.

3. Cooties (2015)

Welcome to the dog eat dog and child eat child world of elementary school. Kids are nasty bags of germs. We all know it. It is universal truths like this that make the film Cooties as effective as it is.

What are some others? Chicken nuggets are repulsive. Playground dynamics sometimes take on the plotline of LORD OF THE FLIES. To an adult eye, children en masse can resemble a seething pack of feral beasts Directing team Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion harness those truths and more – each pointed out in a script penned by a Leigh Whannell-led team of writers – to satirize the tensions to be found in an American elementary school.

2. Suspiria (2018)

Yes, we did choose the 2018 Guadagnino reboot. Argento’s 1977 original is magical and boasts super sadistic teachers. But none of them is played by Tilda Swinton, so—for this list—Guadagnino’s wins.

Swinton is glorious, isn’t she? And her chemistry with Dakota Johnson as Susie Bannion draws you into the story of the American ballet student who finds herself studying in a witches’ coven in a way that felt entirely different than it had in the ’77 version. But it’s not just Swinton. All the teachers at Berlin’s prestigious Markos Dance Academy feel wicked—well, at least those loyal to Markos.

1. The Faculty (1998)

Holy cow, this cast! The student body—Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Clea Duval, Jordana Brewster, Usher!—face off against a teaching staff dreams are made of. Bebe Neuwirth! Jon Stewart! Salma Hayek! Piper Laurie! Famke Janssen! Robert Patrick!

Robert Rodriguez directs a script co-penned by Kevin Williamson (Scream, etc.) that finds the conformity machine of a high school as the perfect setting for an Invasion of the Body Snatchers riff. It’s darkly comical fun from beginning to end.

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Vault Vamp

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Borderlands

by Hope Madden

I want very much to love that Cate Blanchett keeps making Eli Roth movies. Maybe I could find that love if Roth would put her in something he knows how to make—a horror film—instead of trapping her inside a genre he can’t seem to figure out himself.

Borderlands is Roth’s big screen adaptation of a popular video game, a Mad Max style fantasy that follows low life bounty hunter Lilith (Blanchett) to a vile planet of opportunists and thieves on a quest to retrieve the kidnapped daughter of a mogul (Edgar Ramírez).

But daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, Barbie) doesn’t want to be rescued and soon, begrudgingly, Lilith becomes part of Tina’s ragtag band of misfit heroes (along with Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu and the voice of Jack Black).

That’s a good cast, top to bottom. Black and Blanchett co-led Roth’s 2018 misfire The House with a Clock in its Walls. It wasn’t a big miss. It was a fine if unremarkable adaptation of the John Bellairs novel for kids. But Blanchett and Black were fun.

This go-round, Black’s limited to pointless annoyance as he voices robot sidekick Claptrap. Blanchett is glorious, naturally, cutting an imposing video game figure with sly wit and grace. Greenblatt’s a bit of fun, Hart’s underused. But the cast is not the problem.

Roth feels out of sorts. The action is not compelling, the comic timing is way off, there’s little chemistry among his merry band, the stakes feel low, surprises are few, meaningful transitions from one set up to the next don’t exist, the FX are not great.

There are two main action set pieces (that’s not nearly enough, by the way) that could have amounted to something interesting: one with a car and a giant piss field monster and the second with an underground tunnel full of lunatics. Roth can’t generate either the exhilaration or the comedy the first calls for. The second comes closer—it’s a horror set up, truth be told, and that should be an easier fit for the filmmaker—and it’s a natural video game fit. It’s the closest he comes to excitement, but it’s belabored, its end an utter disappointment.

Like the film.

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Lonely in Your Nightmare

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Ganymede

by Hope Madden

Have you ever seen A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge? Because you should, especially if you find yourself intrigued by the plot synopsis for Colby Holt and Sam Probst’s LGBTQ+ horror Ganymede.

In the Nightmare sequel, everything young Jesse Walsh sees around him—his gym teacher’s S&M outfit, the neighborhood bar where men make out with other men in the stairwell, shirtless frenemy Ron Grady—all seem to be pointing him toward his own homosexuality. Meanwhile, a shadowy menace stalks his nightmares, clearly a representation of the terror and horror he associates with the sexual orientation he’s unwilling to recognize.

If that’s not how you read that film, rewatch it because it’s clearly there in every frame.

Holt and Probst are not hiding their agenda behind slasher antics to maximize audience size. High school wrestler Lee Fletcher (Jordan Doww) buries his feelings and repeats the mantra I’m neither gay nor bisexual, I’m straight and heterosexual. But he knows the truth, and his parents—the honorable Big Lee Fletcher (veteran talent Joe Chrest) and tradwife Floy (Robyn Lively)—suspect it. But they all know that the fear of God is enough to turn the boy straight.

Except, of course, that it’s not. And when Lee finds himself drawn to sweet, out-and-proud Kyle (Pablo Castelblanco, the dearest kid), a repugnant, demonic image begins to stalk him. Seriously fundamentalist preacher Pastor Royer (David Koechner, solid) comes to the rescue with his own recipe for salvation.

The filmmakers, working from Holt’s script, juggle societal pressure, family trauma and damaging fundamentalist beliefs with a genuine tenderness for adolescence. A film that sometimes bares its budget gets a boost from Koechner, and the vulnerability Castelblanco brings to his darling character keeps tensions very high.

Doww, on the other hand, struggles to find a whole human inside this smothered, denied young man. Chrest is wasted with an underwritten cliché of a role and Lively’s character arc needed more development, particularly as it relates to Paster Royer.

But there is a refreshing boldness in Ganymede. The conflict between Kyle and Lee parallels those between the ordinary high school students and Carrie White. The idea that homosexuality is somehow abnormal is now the utterly backwards and ridiculous notion and those who cling to it are hypocrites and bullies.

So, give Ganymede a chance. And then, if you like it even a little bit, give yourself the gift of Freddy’s Revenge, no matter how many times you’ve already seen it. That movie was ahead of its time.